Travels in virtual worlds with an eye to the academic, inspiring, even inane.

Monday, October 11, 2010

One Door Closes...Another Opens

Location: House of Usher & Reaction Grid Sandbox

It's gratifying to have someone like John "Pathfinder" Lester pick up your blog from time to time. John noted, either in a comment here or on the SLED list, that the Imprudence Viewer does still permit exports. I'd not been able to do so the other day.

Today, starting with the very door that I first built for The House of Usher, I let poor old Iggy Strangeland, my junkie stringbean avatar in Reaction Grid, give it a go.

First, Iggy in SL selected the Usher front door:

Then he saved the source file to my hard drive under, yes, "Usher Front Door." Note that any export must be wholly owned by you and textures do not transfer but can be uploaded for free (I had made every texture on the door so they did copy).

Iggy #1 logged out and Iggy #2 logged into Reaction Grid. He teleported to Sandbox Island and chose the "Import Object" option from Imprudence's File Menu.

Well, that's a door, ain't it!

I had to rescript a door-open script using my favorite Script Me! site. It's an LSL script so mileage may vary in an OpenSim grid. I put it into the door hinge and presto! Door that opens and closes.

Just the metaphor I need today. Incidentally, stability in Reaction Grid was superb. I kept Iggy Strangeland standing around while I wrote this post. He's still there.

He left a copy of the door for anyone to take. Be my guest. Just go to Sandbox Isle in Reaction Grid and help yourself. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

About In a Strange Land

I'm Joe Essid, a faculty member in the departments of English & Rhetoric & Communication Studies, at the University of Richmond. I began exploring virtual worlds in January, 2007 and taught with Second Life and in OpenSim Grids until Spring, 2013, when I tossed in the towel on a technology I still don't find ready for prime-time, educationally or professionally. These ramblings began as sense-impressions of irreal spaces by a naif in Second Life. I wrote them for our local paper's Web site, and when the "hype era" about SL ended, I moved my musings over here to Blogger. My research and teaching focus on the history of communications technology: I didn't get the flying car I wanted in the Apollo era, or a chance to work on the Moon. So I have to settle for an avatar.